


0. a story

by StringTheori



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Cuddling, M/M, canon divergence maybe, or maybe they are but backwards, sort of, starspangledexchange, there is fluff, where things are nonlinear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-06 23:30:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1876611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StringTheori/pseuds/StringTheori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the 'StarSpangled Exchange' and peachchild.</p><p>"Bucky lifts his face from the pillow, his muscles tense from a night on the overly hard couch and awkward positioning. The imprint of the garish raised fabric stains his cheek red and blurs the vision in one eye with sleep and pressure. It will stop soon enough and, in the meantime, he has Bacon Monday on the schedule."</p>
            </blockquote>





	0. a story

**Author's Note:**

  * For [peachchild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachchild/gifts).



> An entry for the SSE. This fic has domesticness, cuteness, angst, kissing, and is post-CAtWS. There's also some swearing, mentions of torture, mention of sex, a bit of FoxNews bashing, and a lot of stuff inspired by 'what ifs' and 'imagine that's on tumblr.
> 
> I hope it's okay, Peachchild! Your blog is wonderful.

iiii. an end 

Bucky wakes up to bacon sizzling in the dining room. He knows small plumes of smoke tease the alarm that works only 33.789% of the time and that Steve frowns because of it. Bucky thinks, it's the good stuff, the sort from the farmers market Steve buys at an ungodly price (but it is _so good_ ). Memory of last Monday and the taste of turkey lingers on his tongue even now - smoked and thick and delicious as it is every Monday.

Anticipation sours at the back of his throat. Years of cold and soullessness make him balk at knowledge of a hot meal handmade by a person who loves him - _loves_ him as he had years ago.

It's odd.

But then, Steve is a weird little guy even though he stands well over Bucky now a days. (Bucky still doesn't know what to do with the curve his muscles in place of the knobs of his spine.)

Bucky lifts his face from the pillow, his muscles tense from a night on the overly hard couch and awkward positioning. The imprint of the garish raised fabric stains his cheek red and blurs the vision in one eye with sleep and pressure. It will stop soon enough and, in the meantime, he has Bacon Monday on the schedule.

Tomorrow is Tuesday and Bucky doesn't eat on Tuesdays. Therapy turns his stomach.

He shies away from Wednesdays and instead grins at Steve a few feet away at their table. "Bacon?" He says. Steve hunches over the small table with a griddle that takes up half of the scarred wooden length. Light from a dim swinging lamp illuminates the fine blonde hairs on the back of Steve’s neck. The man in question holds a bright pink spatula in one large hand and the other adjusts the temperature knob at the side of the griddle. Clint gave them the spatula. Bucky loves it. Tony gave them the griddle and it's not red, white, and blue as one would expect.

(Blue is present but it's the color of Steve’s eyes. Tony told Bucky this in confidence and Bucky told Steve because fuck confidence, he's not keeping things from Steve anymore. Steve said nothing to Tony - he gave Tony a set of salt-n-pepper shakers designed to look like him and Potts.)

(Tony loves them.)

"Mm," says Steve. Those blue eyes watch the griddle, all serious and with a firm jaw. A smile plays at what should be a pursed frown. Bucky sees the slope of Steve’s shoulders soften and the tight muscles of his legs relax under the dark green sweatpants. "Did I wake you up?"

Bucky shrugs. He swings his legs over the couch cushions and stretches when he sits up. His mechanical hand feels as warm as the flesh one from sleep as he rubs his eyes free of gunk and sleep. "It's Monday. Bacon woke me up."

Steve laughs - a small 'heh' - and slants his gaze to Bucky without a single budge of his head. Bucky grins back at him, easy and wide with only a flash of teeth and all the warmth his ice cube of a heart can muster. Steve smiles for real now; gentle and crooked and this time his chin dips down.

Steve flips the bacon and pokes at the french toast. He yawns, triggering a return yawn from Bucky, and Bucky grabs his phone with the flesh hand.

"They're going to get bored of the same picture every week," says Steve without looking up from the food, nonplussed at the flash of Buckys phone camera. He flips the french toast with his garishly pink spatula and, yes, there is a smile with that ruffled All American hair. Bucky types a caption and tries not to see the past drenched in sepia, of a tiny Steve smiling and cooking. "What did you say this time?"

"I was glorifying your pants and saying you didn't sleep in them last night." Bucky keeps the smirk from his voice. Steve sighs a well-practiced sigh and, no, yes, he laughs and looks to Bucky. Bucky posts the photo and Steve’s phone buzzes with notification from his Instagram feed. "Like I give a fig what they get bored of. If they don't wanna see you, they can stop looking."

"Such an activist." Steve says the words under his breath and his smile isn't fading, no warmth leaves his voice. Even when Bucky walks the length of their pathetically small living room and looms over him. "Clint made the bread."

"No one cares about Hawkeye." Bucky leans in and kisses Steve, soft and opened mouth. It muffles Steve’s light laugh and accents the curve of his spatula-free hand in Buckys oversized shirt. Bucky mumbles against the kiss, "Friend and all but.", then ignores it.

"You," and that is all Steve says before his hand is in Buckys hair, spatula forgotten on some bacon.

They eat while the food is still hot. Bucky sits on the floor, legs crossed, head on Steve’s thigh. Steve has one hand in Buckys hair, scratching comfortingly, and eats with his left hand. They're still clothed and hungry, and food comes first.

Bacon Monday is the best.

 

iii. an interlude

“They _changed_ the Pledge of _Allegiance_?” Steve scrubs at his eyes and groans. “How in the-- You can't just change the Pledge of Allegiance!" 

“Ooh,” Natasha flicks through her small smartphone, one red eye high. “Fox News is claiming you're a god-hating socialist.”

“Fox News thinks that minimum wage is for dead-beats and that victims are to blame for everything.” Large hands flex. Steve can only sigh an fall back into a chair in his dingy little apartment. “And they think the new Annie movie is _reverse racism_.”

“I know, Steve.”

“It's an allegory.”

“I've watched the movie.”

“I don't hate God.” He says the words into his palms, large shoulders slumping. Steve draws in a slow breath. It hurts. He hurts. “I just don't see how they can change the pledge.” She touches his shoulder.

(“Captain Rogers, have you always been so anti-religion? Is there anything else you are keeping from the American public? When did you start leaning into the liberal way o thinking?”

“I was an art student in the gay district,” says Captain America in full uniform on national television. “Irish, Catholic, and sickly in the _forties._ That was before being a part of the first integrated squad in our history. Why would you ever think I was conservative to begin with?”

“... Are you coming out as gay, Captain?”

“Oh for Pete's sake.” says Steve.)

(Rachel Maddow and Steve become good friends.)

(Ellen sends him gift baskets.)

(“I saw the Allegiance issue.” and that's Bucky, outside of Steve's window late at night as if he's a stray cat. Steve lets him in because what else is he supposed to do? “They changed the pledge?”)

 

ii. a middle

Steve dreams in sepia and grays. When he sleeps, his thoughts are of the past and before he could see the color in Buckys eyes or the detailed shift of color in his hair. Bucky has light brown eyes, in his memories, nondescript in shade, and dark hair so some say it doesn't really matter. It did to Steve. It still does.

He sees a world of color when he steps from the machine. Everything about him is off balance - body size, limb ratio, the hard pound of his strong heart, and the dance of rainbow all along the world everyone else sees.

Peggy wears bright lipstick Steve never wants to kiss, not in the way people assume. He _loves_ her, he does, he wants to marry her and have children. It's the respect and the need to be a soldier that overrides his want to kiss her. Peggy is a soldier as well and must be respected as a woman in the force. Women fight all the time but they fight not only the enemies, but the men in their own armies as well.

Steve doesn't think that's fair. Nor does Peggy and he thinks that's why she smiles at him the way she tends to.

Also, there is Bucky.

Steve still uses charcoals in the force. He shies away from colors even though he has a set of oil pencils a woman in New York gave him once word got out that he likes to draw. They hide in the back of his pack, still wrapped up, precious and expensive. Steve likes the bright slash of red on Peggy's lips but he never thinks to draw them.

He draws a strong jaw and delicate ears. He sketches a smile too wide for the face it belongs to and handsome never the less. His fingers itch to pull out the colors but Steve doesn't know the real color of Buckys eyes and it hurts to realize that.

Peggy sees the sketches once, over his shoulder, and says nothing. She touches his shoulder.

Then, there is Bucky.

He stares up, mouth frozen in the repetition of name, rank, number. Buckys eyes are muddy with drugs. Dark lashes dip and flutter open again and that wide smile cracks open and bleeds when Bucky says: "Steve?"

Steve makes words and he gets Bucky out of there. Explosions don't allow for much time to look and make sure they are each alright.

Steve usually dreams of the times before the "I thought you were smaller." Instead he conjures gray lips on the inside of his wrist and near black hair along his stomach. Bucky smiles white after he makes sure small, scrawny Steve is still upright after a fight - after the expression of worry and concern.

Times with Bucky in color wake him up in tears. Light blue eyes bore into memories full of blood. When he wakes up, Steve clutches his pillow, too soft and large on a bed half the size of his room. His throat hurts from screaming and the memory foam of his pillow rips under the grip of his fist. Colorless dreams are the peaceful nights. He stays awake for those.

There is the Winter Soldier. His mouth sets hard and nearly as red as Peggy’s with most of her lipstick off. The pallor of the Soldiers skin is nearly as white as his title save for the smear of black along dead eyes.

He says: "Who the hell is Bucky?"

Steve remembers the newsreel of laughter and Bucky saying, "My friend!"

Steve starts to dream in red.

 

i. the beginning

Contrary to popular belief amongst the Avengers, Steve kissed Bucky first.

He is nineteen and Bucky nearly twenty one. Nineteen thirty eight brings with it Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Steve saves to take Bucky to it.

Bucky sort of hates the idea of it but buys popcorn on the street to smuggle in anyway.

"How old is she, again?" He says during the movie. Steve ignores him, too taken by the elegant shift of lines from the art. "She looks twelve. He looks significantly older than twelve."

" _Bucky_." Steve says. Bucky sighs and shuts up. Steve leans against him in a way he thinks is subtle. Bucky goes still and Steve lets out a long, slow breath just as Snow White finishes her song about adorable baby animals. Bucky moves the popcorn between them.

Neither say a word when Bucky slides his pinkie finger over Steve’s behind the bag of contraband popcorn.

Steve sleeps on the couch cushions in Buckys living room on the nights they go out. Bucky dances with girls, Steve nurses a weak drink, and at the end of the night they always weave back to Buckys much closer apartment and fall asleep. Bucky says the movie counts as a night out but that night, Steve has the closer home. His mother is gone already. Bucky helps fill the void with his swagger and amused drawl when he visits. Generally, Steve feels lonely when he's home.

"That was actually not too bad," Bucky yawns the words into his hand, dark eyes heavy-lidded. He swings his other arm over Steve’s shoulder and grins down at his small friend. Steve clutches the half full bag of popcorn to his chest. Bucky squeezes him so Steve leans again. "What'd you think?"

"I didn't know animation could be like that." And Steve moves closer, nearly a cuddle, all without Bucky saying a word about how friends don't do that stuff. "It's not... silly, Buck."

"Not silly at all." Bucky cards his hand in Steve's hair, wide palm rough and reassuring. Steve hesitates and moves far enough from Bucky to put the popcorn onto the table that is his kitchen counter, dining table, and artist desk. Behind him, Bucky shifts, goes 'hmm', and shoves his hands into his pocket. "She needed breasts, though. Not in _that_ way but, geez, she could'a been our little sister and--"

Steve decides he doesn't care about the future about the exact second he's hauling Bucky down by his suspenders and slanting his mouth over the other mans. 'Future' means little to him if Bucky -- if Bucky--

Bucky doesn't. He is still for a heartbeat - just one - and then his arms are around Steve and he's holding on to his little friend as tight as a person can. It's hard for Steve to breathe. He clutches Bucky to him tighter.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be going through it again when awake more and fixing typos. xoxoxo


End file.
